ERICA WOULDN'T AGREE TO INSPECT the air duct the quartet wanted her to shimmy through until Amara had given her ten samples of ice cream, and even then, she was hesitant.

"Yeah, I don't know," she descended from the ladder, clicking off the flashlight in her hand and resting her palms on the table where the blueprints for Starcourt still lay. Amara had to give Erica credit for not being the slightest bit fazed when she and the others had taken the risk of disclosing her of the Russians or what they wished of her, but she understood that persuading her to help them would be no easy task. At only ten years of age, Erica was far more eloquent and self-assured than Amara could ever hope to be, especially when she wanted something.

"You don't know if you can fit?" Dustin queried, confused.

"Oh, I can fit," Erica corrected Dustin. "I just don't know if I want to."

"Are you claustrophobic?" Robin guessed, though she already had a sneaking suspicion about why Erica wasn't adhering to their request so easily. Even so, she was the only ten-year-old they knew who would even consider crawling through a vent to infiltrate a secret Russian storage room.

Erica snickered. "I don't have phobias."

"Okay, well, what's the problem?" Steve asked, arms folded across his torso. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, for Erica's stance immediately hardened.

"The problem is," Erica retorted, mimicking Steve's posture, "I still haven't heard what's in this for Erica."

Amara stepped forwards before any of her friends could argue further, acknowledging that Erica wouldn't assist them without something in return. Truth be told, it was better than her being unable to fit or having a fear of tight spaces because it was something they could readily fix. "I could give you more samples," she offered, but even then she understood that it wouldn't be enough to persuade her.

Erica smirked, popping one of her hips. "You're gonna need way more than a few samples to even negotiate with me."

A USS Butterscotch, several milkshakes, and an ice cream cone, cup, and sundae of every imaginable flavor later, Erica was finally ready to bargain with the others. Steve slid a second banana boat across the table to accompany what was likely a quarter of their entire supply, but she merely pushed it back toward him with a simpering smile.

"More fudge, please," Erica demanded with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Go on." Steve sighed through his nose before getting up from the booth they were packed into and retreating to the counter to douse the banana boat with more fudge per her request. Amara felt bad for him, but she knew that Erica wanted them to cave. Now that they had given her what she desired, it was their time to detail more about her end of the deal.

"All right, you see this?" Robin held up the blueprint map with the passage outlined in red marker for Erica to see, but she was more interested in consuming the last of her first banana boat than paying full attention to what she needed to do. "This is the route you're going to take. Then we just wait till the last delivery goes out tonight. Then you knock out the grate, jump down, open the door."

"Then you find out what's in those boxes?" Erica finished for her, swirling her ice cream into a liquid.

"Exactly," Amara piped up, drawing Erica's focus to her. "After that, we'll handle it on our own – we just need you to open the door for us. Then you're home free."

"Mm-hmm," Erica hummed, considering what Amara had said: that they didn't need her for anything beyond going through the air duct, but then she remembered an important piece of information Dustin had mentioned. "And you say this guard is armed?"

"Yes, but he won't be there," Dustin assured her, though not very convincingly.

"We'll make sure of it," Amara promised, adapting her facial expression to appear as sincere as possible. "We won't ask you to start until nobody's around."

"And booby traps?"

Robin raised her eyebrows. "Booby traps?"

"Lasers, spikes in the wall?" Erica elaborated, and Robin couldn't help but laugh. This only egged Erica on, for Amara seemed to be the only one out of the four of them who had shown some degree of concern for her safety. "You know what this half-baked plan of yours sounds like to me? Child endangerment."

"We'll be in radio contact with you the entire time – "

"Ah, ah, ah!" Erica cut across Robin, brandishing her index finger in her face. "Child endangerment!"

Amara turned to Robin and silently conveyed to the best of her abilities that Erica had a valid point. She was two years younger than the kids had been when the Upside Down robbed them of their innocence, inflicting them with horrors no child should ever have to endure. While whatever it was they were contending with didn't appear to be anywhere near as dangerous as an army of Demodogs or commodities with psionic powers, they were making a conscious decision to imperil Erica's life.

"Erica?" Dustin interjected, and the girl in question reluctantly shifted her attention away from Robin. "Hi. Uh... We think these Russians want to do harm to our country. Great harm. Don't you love your country?"

Though Amara didn't mention it out loud, she didn't believe that Dustin's strategy was the best to get Erica on board. He and his friends had been bullied relentlessly all their lives, notably for his cleidocranial dysplasia and Will's lack of interest in girls. But none of them had had it worse than Lucas, whose family represented one of very few Black households in the predominantly white town of Hawkins, Indiana, who had likely had a gun pointed at him at least once in his life, who had been plowed into a wall because of the bigotry of a hateful teenager. Amara didn't know if Erica had been through anything similar, but she'd likely been taught by her parents to keep her guard up. It was hard to love a country that didn't love you back.

"You can't spell 'America' without 'Erica,'" Erica pointed out, proving Amara wrong about it not being an adequate approach. Emboldened by the first remark in which Erica hadn't shot any of them down completely, Dustin chose to lean into that.

"Uh, yeah, yeah," he spoke above the obnoxious sound of Erica slurping her root beer float. "Oddly, that's, uh, totally true. So, so, don't do this for us. Do it for your country. Do it for your fellow man. Do this for America... Erica."

The aforementioned girl, who had been slurping her drink for the duration of Dustin's speech, finally removed the straw from her mouth and smirked at him. "Ooh! I just got the chills. Oh, yeah, from this float, not your speech." The smile was wiped from Dustin's face no sooner than it had materialized. "Know what I love most about this country? Capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?"

Amara, who had been more familiar with capitalism over the past month than at any other point in time, nodded along with the others.

"It means this is a free market system," Erica disregarded the fact that her companions had stated that they knew what capitalism was for the sake of cementing what she wished for in return for aiding them in their mission. "Which means people get paid for their services, depending on how valuable their contributions are. And it seems to me, my ability to fit into that little vent is very, very valuable to you all. So, you want my help? This USS Butterscotch better be the first of many. And I'm talking free ice cream for life." She punctuated her statement by popping a maraschino cherry into her mouth and flicking the stem onto the table, knowing she had won.

Robin and Amara glanced at one another before concluding that giving Erica the satisfaction of free ice cream was by far their best option. There were very few ten-year-olds who were willing to break into a storage room guarded by Russians, but Erica was offering to do it for them even if it was at a price. In the end, it wasn't as if the two of them and Steve would end up working at Scoops Ahoy for the rest of their lives.

"Deal," Amara declared. Erica held out her sticky hand for her to shake and she did so, resulting in the adhesiveness being transferred onto Amara's hand. "I'll be right back," she muttered, gesturing for Dustin to move out of the way so she could exit the booth. "Need to wash my hands... and tell Steve about our deal."

She excused herself and made her way to the employee room, where she'd be able to wash her hands and catch Steve on the way. The boy was finishing adding more fudge to the banana boat, which he'd been doing for the last five minutes as though to avoid facing Erica, who could be quite intimidating when she wanted to be. He peeked up when Amara walked by, pausing his work.

"Well?" he inquired, casting a glimpse in the direction of the booth where Dustin, Robin, and Erica were still sat, the latter helping herself to the dozen or so treats laid out for her. "Were you able to get her to agree?"

"Yeah, we came to a compromise," Amara informed Steve, nervously shifting on her heels in the hope that he wouldn't be angry at her and Robin for striking a deal he didn't approve of. "She'll help us if we give her free ice cream for life. Her words, not mine."

"Okay," Steve shrugged nonchalantly, picking up the banana boat to return to Erica now that she was pleased and therefore less scary. "I mean, hey, it's not like we'll be working here after summer's over."

EVEN IF ERICA HAD CONSENTED to what she dubbed 'Operation Child Endangerment,' the others made sure to provide her with protective equipment including arm guards, knee pads, and Robin's old bike helmet, which they'd duct-taped two flashlights to the sides of. At roughly a quarter to nine, Robin, Amara, and Steve closed up Scoops for the night and, along with Dustin, stationed themselves on the roof adjacent to the loading dock. This time, Steve swallowed his pride and let Dustin utilize the binoculars so as not to draw the attention of the Russians again and end up not so lucky this time.

From her position between Robin and Steve, Amara drummed her nails against the parapet in anticipation as the Russian guards once again loaded boxes labeled with the Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes insignia into the storage room, the very enclosure Erica would be breaking into when the time came for her to do so. The two men guarding the double doors were as menacing as ever, for only twenty-four hours ago they could have sworn they had heard a presence within the night. The intruders were determined not to let that happen again, hence why they were waiting for the guards to disappear before beginning.

Only at five minutes to nine when the guards had finalized the process of unloading their latest delivery and vacated the premises did Robin activate their walkie-talkie. "Erica, do you copy?" she kept her voice low, cognizant that anyone could overhear her even if there was nobody in sight.

        "Mm-hmm, I copy," came the reply, Dustin having lent Erica his headset. "You nerds in position or what?"

"Yeah, we're in position," Robin relayed, her voice and the static of the walkie-talkie the only noises disrupting the stillness of the night. "It's all quiet here, so you've got the green light."

        "Green light, roger that," Erica stated. "Commence Operation Child Endangerment."

"Can we maybe not call it that?" Robin pleaded, already guilty enough for roping a ten-year-old into their mission. It didn't help that she kept reminding them of how young she was.

        "See you on the other side. Nerds."

With that the line fell silent, leaving the quartet on the roof with nothing to do but wait. Amara thought of how she hadn't seen her brother in more than a day. She'd been too preoccupied with her current mission to notify Kevin of her whereabouts the previous night, but she didn't know that he hadn't been in a position where he could answer the phone. Amara didn't know that it would be her first brush with the Upside Down where her brother wasn't in the know because it was the first instance he would have a bigger role than keeping their parents in the dark.

"You alright?" Steve's query cut through Amara's thoughts and she resurfaced. His eyes were filled with concern and her heart melted, but she recognized that her worry about not contacting Kevin for more than a day was inconsequential compared to what they were trying to accomplish. Amara didn't lie to Steve about her emotions, but breaking and entering a covert storage room called for desperate measures.

"Yeah, I am," Amara's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Thanks for asking."

With the lie sticking to her tongue, Amara forced herself to stop fretting over Kevin not being aware of the full scope of their situation when it wasn't doing her any good. What she failed to realize was that her emotions, regardless of what they were, were valid. The world was built in such a way that people like Amara believed themselves, and in turn, their feelings to be a waste of space. It was a negative cycle that kept revolving long after she had first endeavored to take up space.

        "All right, nerds," Erica finally spoke after ten minutes of silence. "I'm there."

"Do you – Do you see anything?" Robin stammered, the others leaning in so they could pick up the answer more easily.

        "Yeah, I see those boring boxes you're so excited about." Okay, maybe they didn't need to hear that.

"Any guards?" Robin inquired, reminded once again of Erica's age and vulnerability.

        "Negative."

"Booby traps?" Robin referenced Erica's claim from earlier, unable to stop herself from smirking.

        "If I could see them, they'd be pretty shit traps, wouldn't they?" Erica retorted, causing Steve to roll his eyes.

"Thank you for that," Robin deadpanned, glancing at Amara. Her best friend merely shrugged her shoulders and smiled, her anxiety momentarily extinguished.

        "I'm in," Erica declared, those words alone reigniting the nerves Amara had fought so hard to quell. She hadn't interacted much with the parents of the kids she was friends with, save for Joyce and Hopper, but they all trusted that she had their best interests at heart and would never jeopardize their safety. How far gone did she have to be to have done the very opposite? Steve was in a similar state, tugging at the roots of his hair and berating himself for not being a skilled combatant.

The set of double doors opened with a flourish, revealing Erica in all her glory. The girl marched outside, halting no more than a few feet away from the entrance and relishing in the equally baffled expressions of her companions. If anything, they were more relieved that she was unscathed than annoyed about now having to heed her demands, but she still felt the need to remind them.

"Free ice cream, for life."

The others wasted no time in scurrying in the direction of the rooftop door, wrenching it open and flying down the stairwell. Erica was still waiting for them when they made it to the doorway, licking her lips in anticipation of the lifetime supply of free ice cream she'd start receiving as soon as tomorrow. Dustin, Steve, and Robin all made their way inside but Amara stopped Erica before she could follow, not wanting her to be involved any more than she already was.

"Hey, you can wait outside if you want," she told Erica, bending down slightly to meet her height. "You've done your part – you can have as much ice cream as you want tomorrow. We've got it from here."

Erica seemed to consider that option for a second: it was already past her curfew and her parents assumed her to be staying with her best friend for the night. But at the same time, she'd just won herself free ice cream for the rest of her life in exchange for accessing a room stacked to the brim with boxes. How hilarious would it be to rub it in their faces that she'd gotten what she'd wanted if they happened to discover nothing notable? She couldn't pass up that opportunity.

"I could, but I'd very much like to see what's in those boxes," Erica decided, sauntering into the storage room to join the others. "After that, you can drive me to Tina's. Consider it part of our deal."

"Okay," Amara murmured, choosing not to say anything else. Suggesting that Erica didn't need to contribute any further was more of a way to convince herself that she and the others hadn't already imperiled her life enough, but it was ultimately up to her if she wanted to stay rather than wait. After all, it was just a storage room.

The five of them gathered around a wooden table supporting three boxes, Erica stepping onto one of the ones on the ground to obtain a better look. Dustin wordlessly handed Steve his pocket knife to slice open the masking tape sealing a package marked with the Imperial Panda logo, idly wondering why he was the only one who consistently had everything they required. None of them paid any mind to the double doors shutting behind them.

Once Steve had finished his job, he pried the flaps open and returned Dustin his pocket knife. Erica, Robin, Amara, and Dustin all inched forward curiously, Amara ensuring that Erica didn't step too close in case the box housed a bomb or anything else that could kill them. However, their eyesight was met with a metal crate with a silver handle. It wasn't packaged dumplings or lo mein noodles, but it wasn't what they were expecting, either.

After a moment of deliberation, Steve rotated the handle ninety degrees until it emitted a satisfying click. He removed the lid, eyebrows scrunching at the sight of four similar handles staring up at them, steam hissing from them in the absence of the cover. The closest thing Amara could speculate them to be were chemical weapons, and even then they didn't look like the ones she'd seen on news broadcasts of the Iran-Iraq War.

"That's definitely not Chinese food," Steve voiced what they were all thinking.

Discarding the lid onto a box marked for Kaufman Shoes, he prepared to unlock one of the cylindrical objects from its holding but stopped himself, cognizant that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he jeopardized the security of his companions. "Uh, maybe you guys should, you know, stand back," he suggested.

Amara, Erica, and Robin complied and moved back a few inches, but Dustin stayed put. "No," he shook his head defiantly, standing his ground.

"Just... just step back, okay?" Steve asserted, attempting and failing to shove him away.

"No."

"Step back. Seriously."

"No. No!" Dustin's increase in volume was a slight shock to the three onlookers, who hadn't expected him to be so adamant about sticking by Steve. Amara supposed it had to do with their brotherly love for one another, but she and the others elected not to speak and further add to the tension in the room. "If you die, I die."

Steve was tempted to push Dustin back but conceded that there was no use in bickering with him any further. His best friends just so happened to be the most stubborn individuals he'd ever met, and yet he cherished them all the same. "Okay," he threw his hand up in defeat, permitting Dustin to remain by his side. Drawing in a breath, he twisted the handle of one of the cylinders until it unlocked, praying that he wasn't unleashing a noxious gas that would end their lives.

Except it wasn't a chemical weapon or anything Amara had ever seen in her life for that matter. The interior of the canister was comprised of a glowing green substance that only furthered her confusion. Why were the Russians so determined to import that of all things through Starcourt without it being detected just to store it at the back of the mall? The code had answered only so much, informing them that Russians were shipping something throughout the mall disguised as products for other stores at specific times, but nothing beyond that. None of them knew where to go from there.

"What the hell?" Steve muttered. A part of him was thankful that he hadn't set off a bomb or a chemical leak, but he was extremely wary of the object in his grasp.

"What is that?" Robin couldn't help but ask. Even Erica was lost for words, unable to articulate a sarcastic comment to diffuse the suspense.

But the contents within the cartridge were the least of their worries. A rumbling within the walls that shook the room at full force compelled them to divert their attention from the substance to the room itself, wondering where it had originated from and why it had occurred. Amara felt uneasy, planting her feet firmly on the ground to stabilize herself.

"Was that just me, or did the room move?" Dustin broke the silence, his voice quivering amid his uncertainty.

"Booby traps," Erica croaked. For the first time since Amara had met her she appeared scared, and she instantly regretted allowing her to enter the room again after she'd done what they'd asked of her. So much for being a good babysitter, she admonished.

The room trembled again and Amara snapped herself into action. "Let's get out of here," she urged, gesturing for Steve to pass her the canister. He did so, sealing the lid back onto the crate while Amara unzipped Erica's backpack to store their evidence of what the Russians were transporting. Meanwhile, Dustin was repeatedly pressing one of the buttons on the control panel to no avail, for the doors remained locked.

"Which one do I press, Erica?" Dustin asked, not wanting to contemplate the possibility that they were trapped in the storage room.

"Just press the damn button, nerd," Erica grumbled. Amara had secured the cylinder in the girl's backpack and was now zipping it up. Her throat felt as though someone had lodged a stone there, and she questioned why everything always seemed to go wrong in scenarios such as these.

"Which one?" Dustin fought the urge to vent his frustration at the buttons not working on her, acknowledging that she was likely just as terrified as the rest of them even if she wasn't showing it. "I'm pressing the button, okay?"

"Press 'open door!'"

"I'm pressing 'open door!'" Dustin shot back. Robin let out a sigh and covered her ears to block out their squabbling, an action that, despite the queasiness in her stomach, didn't go unnoticed by Amara.

"Just open the – press the other button!" Steve cut in, gently pushing Dustin aside so he could have a go at trying to let them out. The two of them began shouting over one another, wrestling for control of the panel all while Robin yelled at them to get out of the way and let Erica press the correct button. Amara briefly considered launching Erica back into the vent she'd wriggled through if they couldn't get out, but it was too high up for her to reach and she couldn't run the risk of her injuring herself.

"Would you stop?"

"I'm trying!"

"Would you let me just do it? Would you stop?"

"Can you two both stop?" Amara groaned, pressing her fingertips against her temple in irritation. Steve reluctantly capitulated, but not before either he or Dustin had belligerently slammed their palm against the green button at the center of the control panel in a desperate shot to unlock the door.

"Just open the door!" Robin's shout was drowned out by a red barricade materializing from the ceiling and closing itself over their only exit. If they hadn't been trapped before they definitely were now, and Amara's eyes widened upon further inspection of the buttons Dustin and Steve had been so feverishly punching. How could none of them have noticed the up and down arrows staring them in the face the entire time?

"Uhh, guys?" Amara spoke, motioning at said buttons in the beat that followed. "I don't think this is a storage room."

All at once, the room plunged at a sickening speed, knocking the five of them off their feet. Amara elicited a scream and reflexively latched onto the handle of a forklift before she could crash into the wall, her stomach feeling as though it would drop through the floor. Amid her panic, she recalled a lesson from physics about how objects in freefall lost weight even if they retained their mass, but she never thought it would apply to her. It was a thousand times worse than calculating the weight of rubber balls based on their mass and the rate of speed at which they fell.

Farther and farther they plummetted, all of them screaming their throats sore. They had all succeeded in grasping onto something such as a box or a table to steady themselves if that was even possible with how fast they were moving. Amara was gripping the cart handle so fiercely that her fingers had whitened, questioning when the elevator would stop descending or if she even wanted it to – as knotted up as her abdomen was, there were bound to be Russians on the other side that none of them were prepared to face and her crowbar was under her bed, gathering dust.

"SHIT! SHIT!" Dustin screeched, bolting to the control panel while supporting himself against the wall. He frantically smashed the buttons in hopes of halting their drop but they remained unresponsive.

"We're going down! We're going down!" a red-faced Steve hollered, his hands clamped around one of the unopened boxes that by some miracle hadn't fallen off of the table.

"Yeah, no shit, Harrington!" Robin, who was bracing herself against the shelves behind her, blurted at the boy in vexation.

"We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die!" Amara exclaimed, whipping her head around in hysteria. "What the hell were we thinking?!"

"WHY DON'T THESE BUTTONS WORK?!" Dustin shrieked, repeatedly slamming his palms against every button he could find, none of which slowed their descent.

"Press the button!" Erica yelled, shoving Dustin's hand away and attempting to stop them from falling herself, just as Robin had suggested they do earlier.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M DOING?!"

"Come on, press something!" Steve begged, brandishing one of his hands wildly. "Just press the button!"

"Push it!"

The elevator abruptly jerked to a stop, sending the five of them crashing into the wall, the floor, and each other. Amara lost her hold on the forklift and tumbled to the ground, landing painfully on her hip in the process; meanwhile, Robin had collided with the shelves and was clutching her throbbing head with a wince, while the ten-pound package that Steve had been grasping had tumbled onto him. They all remained stationary for a few seconds, allowing their racing heartbeats to slow down as they processed the recent turn of events.

"My groin. It fell on my groin," Steve whimpered beneath the weight of the box, struggling to haul it off of himself. "Dustin! Get this off of me! I can't move."

Dustin clambered to his feet and heaved the box off of Steve, settling it onto the wooden table. Amara thrust herself into a sitting position, her muscles screaming in protest just by trying to move. She remembered some other science lesson about how objects weighed more the closer they were to the center of the earth, but the fact that she could barely move probably had more to do with the impact of the elevator stopping than how far they were beneath the earth's surface.

"Is everyone okay?" Robin was the first to speak, still massaging the ache in her head.

"Yeah, I'm great, now that I know that Russians can't design elevators!" Steve bellowed, rising to his feet and hurling Dustin aside with a surprised yelp so he could access the control panel. Amara felt bad for Dustin, who had been shoved far too many times in the time that they'd been enclosed in the elevator.

"I think we've clearly established that those buttons don't work," Robin pointed out, having gotten to her feet as well. She extended one of her hands for Amara to take, hoisting her up with a grunt.

"They're buttons! They have to do something!" Steve shot back. If there was anything worse than free-falling hundreds of feet, it was being stuck inside an elevator hundreds of feet below the mall with no way of escape.

"Yeah... " Amara's gaze fell upon the slot identical to the one outside the double doors they'd witnessed the Russians unlock via a keycard, the item they thought they wouldn't need because they had Erica. "If we had a keycard, which we don't."

"A what?"

"It's an electronic lock. Same as the loading dock door," Robin explained, joining Steve by the control panel and gesturing at the slot that shone red in the absence of a keycard. "If we don't have a keycard, it won't operate, meaning – "

"We're stuck in here," Dustin concluded with a heavy sigh, pushing himself away from the wall.

"Yeah," Robin nodded. Steve slammed the panel door shut in defeat, dragging a hand through his hair as he typically did when he was apprehensive.

"Just so you nerds are aware," Erica chimed in, bringing their focus to her, "I'm supposed to be spending the night at Tina's, and Tina always covers for me. But if I'm not home for Uncle Jack's party tomorrow and my mom finds out you four are responsible, she's gonna hunt you down, one by one, and slit your throat."

Normally Amara would feel guilty for letting down Erica's parents; even if she had only seen them in passing, they thought highly of her for being something of an older sister to Lucas and the rest of the Party. But there was something about being trapped underground that made her give less of a shit than usual, and apparently Steve felt a similar way.

"I don't care about Tina! Or Uncle Jack's party!" Steve regretted the words as soon as they spilled from his mouth, making a conscious effort to understand that she was young and didn't have a full grasp of the severity of their circumstances. "Your mom's not gonna be able to find us if we're dead in a Russian elevator!"

"Hey," Dustin uttered before Erica could retaliate, motioning at the roof. "What if we climbed out?"

"We just fell God knows how many feet, there's no way that'll work," Robin muttered, slumping to the floor. Dustin and Steve ignored her and got to work constructing a staircase of boxes to reach the hatch at the ceiling, holding out hope that there was a chance for them to escape. But Amara didn't need to do any scientific calculations to admit the truth: they had descended far too deep below Starcourt to ever be able to reach the surface.

IT TYPICALLY TOOK AMARA at least an hour to fall asleep on a given night. The end of the day was naturally the time at which she would contemplate everything that had occurred from a social situation she'd misread to a monster she'd battled, and after all that she and her companions had been through that day, she had a lot to contemplate.

She and the others had given up on trying to find a way out of the elevator. They'd considered rerouting the wires in the control panel, using their combined strength to break down the steel barrier, stacking boxes on top of the elevator to climb up (that one was more of a joke), and everything in between. But the Russians were masterminds who had designed their scheme so well that even those who caught wind of it likely wouldn't live to tell the tale. The odds were very much not in their favor.

Amara had alternated from lying facedown to block out the lights lining the walls of the elevator shaft permeating the enclosure to being curled up in the fetal position on the floor to propping herself against the wall with her legs drawn to her chest. Dustin was out cold in a corner of the room, his head lolling onto his shoulders and quiet snores leaving his nostrils; Robin was sprawled out on the floor, using her arm as a pillow; Erica had arguably the best luck, for she had nestled her head against her My Little Pony backpack and fallen right asleep. At least the three of them would have more energy come tomorrow.

Amara hoped that Eurydice and Scott were enjoying their anniversary trip in New York City so much that they chose to stay there – it would do them better than returning home in two days only to find their daughter missing and possibly dead. And while she knew that Kevin would pick up on her absence and waste no time in trying to find her, she had no way of notifying him of her location.

"Can't sleep?"

Amara glanced to her left to find that Steve, who had been attempting to fall asleep by leaning against one of the boxes on the ground, had approached her. He had since calmed down after lashing out at everyone in the elevator other than her, and a part of her was grateful that he of all people was trapped with her. Amara had been forced to read cheesy novels about individuals who ended up locked in an elevator with the person they liked, but she didn't feel giddy or lovesick – she felt safe.

"Apparently not," she murmured, glimpsing at her watch. It had always been a habit of hers, relying on time to ground her and dictate her daily structure. It also had to do with the fact that the clock against the wall wasn't operating, but the point was that she couldn't go more than a few minutes without checking the time. "We really didn't plan this out well," she couldn't help but laugh, but she was scared shitless.

"I mean, I don't think any of us were expecting the room to suddenly turn into an elevator," Steve noted, joining Amara by the wall. "But then again, we weren't expecting to fight a whole army of Demodogs last year and we still pulled it off... "

"We just happened to be really lucky that night," Amara reminisced, hugging her knees against her torso. "But you're right – we do have a track record of being lucky in these types of situations. I just... don't know how far sheer dumb luck can get us this time."

Amara had a point – the monsters they'd faced in the past were predictable in nature. They hunted at night, possessed limited intelligence, and the hive mind that linked their consciousness ensured that one hit harmed them all. But they were dealing with humans in this scenario; people with the same capacity of intellect as them, if not more, who were carrying out a clandestine operation and marketing it in the form of an American Dream-style mall, who were merely a metal guardrail away from discovering them. It wasn't a fight they were used to or prepared for.

"Y'know, earlier I was wondering where all these boxes went after they were stored here," Amara continued, resting her chin on top of her forearms. "Because why would the Russians go through all the trouble of bringing whatever that green stuff is here if they're just going to leave it? But now we know, I guess. The Russians have been below our feet this whole time, and we found out the hard way."

"That might explain where the code came from," Steve brought up. Amara had fallen silent, her fingernails indenting crescent moons into her palms and her eyes directed at the ceiling – a telltale sign she was holding back tears. "Hey, I'm scared too, you know," he admitted, his voice soft.

Amara mustered the strength to hold his gaze. She'd cried in front of him before on multiple occasions, but she really wasn't in the mood to do so now. "Oh yeah?" she whispered.

"I'm terrified out of my fucking mind," Steve confessed, thankful that the other three occupants in the elevator weren't awake to bear witness to his rare moment of vulnerability. "I'm terrified because I'm shit at protecting kids, who could now die because of me, because I wasn't brave enough to fight the guard, which would've gotten us a keycard, because if I die... there's a part of me that doesn't think my dad would care."

Out of all of her friends' parents, Amara had never met Steve's. His dad operated a megacorporation and had let his money and status get to his head to the point where he believed himself to be invincible – to tax fraud, to exploiting his employees, to cheating on his wife and trusting that she wouldn't divorce him due to her reliance on him. Steve's mom was nice enough, but she had doomed herself by marrying a businessman incapable of loving her the way she deserved. She lacked the credibility to stand up to him, whether it was for a bra she unearthed in their shared bed or for him calling their son a disappointment to his face.

Steve had never met Amara's family, but he knew she thought the world of them. Eurydice, who looked the epitome of a suburban housewife but had a fight in her that far too many overlooked, who had filed a longshot lawsuit against their old school board because she loved Amara and fought for her when no one else would; Scott, whose job prevented him spending as much time with his family as he wished but still made time for them, who was easygoing and laidback and never felt the need to adhere to what society envisioned a man or father to be; and Kevin, the loyal, dependable older brother who had been her strongest defender growing up.

Now trapped in a secret Russian elevator hundreds of feet below ground level... Amara wondered if she'd ever see her family again.

"Even if he did, it would be far too late," Amara stated firmly. "He can't just decide to start caring about you when you're no longer in his life."

"He's too much of a douche to realize that," Steve lamented, tousling his unkempt hair. "But my point is, you're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to feel anything, really."

Amara thought back to her apprehension about not being in contact with Kevin for more than a day. It had seemed so trivial when they were waiting on the parapet for Erica to meet them, but now they were stuck for the time being and she wished she'd acted on that fear and given him a call. Amara had contended with bullies, teachers who didn't actively demean her but weren't welcoming either, monsters from an alternate dimension, and now Russians, but she was and would always be her own worst enemy.

And now, she had someone telling her she didn't have to be.

"I haven't seen my brother in more than a day," Amara disclosed, wringing her hands together. "I know that it sounds stupid, but it also only sounds stupid to me, and you're going to tell me that it's not stupid, but the first time I was involved in everything with the Upside Down I didn't keep in touch with him, and he thought I might have died. The second time wasn't as bad because I made sure to call him, but this time, even if it doesn't have to do with the Upside Down I made the same mistake, and I'm probably more scared that he'll be angry with me for not learning anything rather than worried about me, and I'm right and it's stupid and I need to stop fucking rambling."

She exhaled and let her head fall slack against the wall, her eyes betraying her. "Why do you put up with me?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Put up with you? I don't put up with you," Steve said earnestly. "You think I just spend time with you because I feel sorry for you? No way is that true, Amara."

"You're right, I'm just falling through that stupid rabbit hole again – "

"Hey, hey, hey, it's not stupid," Steve consoled her. He had the urge to brush away her tears but fretted that he'd be encroaching upon her personal space. "What did I just say about you being allowed to feel anything, huh? It's okay."

Steve meant it when he wanted to throttle anyone who had convinced Amara that who she was as a person didn't mean anything. Amara, lover of everything science fiction, babysitter extraordinaire, quirky and clever and undervalued beyond belief... how did the world not see what he saw? The girl who would passionately rave with Dustin about Blood Music to make up for his friends abandoning him for their girlfriends, who could memorize just about anything within minutes, who made time to look over Will's D&D campaigns even if she barely knew anything about the game because no one else would anymore... the world didn't see that. Because the world didn't want to see that.

Steve could've told Amara he liked her right then and there, but he didn't. She'd become even more overwhelmed and back away from him and disregard everything he'd just said, assuming he was just trying to win her over. Maybe he was a coward, but he wasn't selfish; he'd gladly accept any form of Amara he could get, even if it was just friendship.

Instead, he held out his arms and Amara promptly hurled herself into them. There it was again, that feeling of being completely and inexplicably safe. Yes, her heart skipped a beat, but she was far too grateful for Steve to think too much of it. She clutched fistfuls of his uniform, making a deliberate effort to steady her breathing and clear her mind. Within time, her breaths had evened out and her brain was no longer foggy, but she felt no need to break away.

"Thank you, Steve," her voice trembled mid-sentence, wondering what on earth she had done to deserve him in her life.

"Anytime, Amara."

published to quotev: 12/18/22
published to wattpad: 10/26/24

AUTHOR'S NOTE

hope y'all don't mind how long the chapters are getting? I could've made this one and the last into three parts but it didn't flow as well

i know some people don't like it when autistic characters have meltdowns but i feel like it would be unrealistic if amara didn't have one at least once in this book,,, it's very common for me to worry about one thing and then suddenly i start freaking out about everything and i can't stop until i redirect myself. this whole thing was a condensed version of how i feel from time to time and the misconception that people i care about are angry with me or that i'm a burden to them. i guess what i'm trying to do here is frame a meltdown not as something that serves as a hindrance but as deserving of support, so this was very raw for me to write.

lots of love, lydia